Speaking of cities

Somebody cut a square out of a shopping bag just so that they could smuggle this footage out of China in 1990. It depicts the Kowloon Walled City. The Walled City was an act of spontaneous, collaborative architecture in response to political and social upheaval — a spatial harbinger of what the internet would eventually look like.

Naturally, China destroyed it.

To get an idea of what the coverage of the City’s destruction was like, watch this:

Sidebar: The cheery tone of the news coverage might be unfamiliar or disconcerting to North Americans used to saturation levels of gravitas. But Japanese news is the same — almost soporifically cheery, as though you won’t notice the tragedy of a given situation if the broadcaster’s voice is high enough or the font curvy enough. (Kamiyama Kenji and Kon Satoshi have both done their best to lambast this tradition, and to great effect. But it’s hard to understand the commentary without some example of the source text.)

Madeline Ashby…

She has worked with Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Nesta, Data & Society, The Atlantic Council, the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination, Changeist, and others. Her essays have appeared at BoingBoing, io9, WorldChanging, Creators Project, Arcfinity, MISC Magazine, and FutureNow. She is the author of the Machine Dynasty novels. Her novel Company Town was a Canada Reads finalist.